The average annual wage for Korean workers went up in 2015. But, a closer look reveals employees in corporations earned more than their counterparts in small and mid-sized firms. For more on the numbers, Lee Min-young reports.

A report released by the Federation of Korean Industries on Wednesday says the average annual wage of Korean workers in 2015 saw a 1.5 increase compared to the previous year, but the already large wage disparity between large conglomerates and smaller companies have widened. Experts say that the widened wage gap between workers in large and mid-sized companies is partly due to the strong negotiating power of labor unions in large firms.

“Labor unions and employers normally negotiate on ordinary wages and last year, the range of this ordinary wage expanded by law, enabling unions in large companies to have relatively stronger bargaining power in terms of salary, as opposed to employees at smaller firms.”

Unionized workers at Korea’s leading conglomerates such as Hyundai Motor have been going on partial strikes recently, and some say this may hurt workers of smaller companies, let alone the economy.

“Labor unions in conglomerates that wage strikes demanding a pay raise can rather hurt subcontractors, mainly small and medium-sized companies as they have to halt production lines.”

According to the report, large companies paid 4.2 percent more in 2015 than a year before, while small and medium-sized firms raised their employees’ salaries by only about one percent. The data also shows that the average annual salary of regular workers in large companies stood at about 57,000 U.S. dollars while workers in small and medium sized companies earned 29,000 dollar a year in average.

This means the annual salary of regular workers in large enterprises falls within the top ten percent of income level while earnings of employees in smaller enterprises are placed within the top 35 percent.